One Witch and her Elf
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: Hermione Granger returns home at the end of her fifth year at Hogwarts to find something unexpected waiting for her. Mildly alternate universe. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I am still not J. K. Rowling. Nor do I own Harry Potter.

Note: The following one-shot is (as with the somewhat sillier piece, 'Point of Principle') another thing I wrote in between multiple rewrites of the seventh Chapter of 'Alternate Scene by the Lake 4'. It does not share a universe with either of those pieces, and assumes a universe which approximates to the books of canon, save in a couple of background details, up until the end of the 1995-1996 school year. The story takes up as Hermione Granger arrives back home on the night she returns from Hogwarts...

* * *

Hermione had barely had time to get her trunk up to her room, after a frankly awful school year, when there was the sharp _crack_ of a house-elf materialising and suddenly she found herself face-to-face with an all too familiar face.

"Kreacher?" Hermione said.

"Mudblood mistress addresses Kreacher?" the elf scowled.

"Kreacher, I… wait: 'Mistress'?"

"Sirius Black, the treacherous, nasty, undeserving son of The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black is dead, therefore the residence of the Blacks, and any Black elves are the property of the next Black heir. Kreacher has checked the family tapestry quite thoroughly, and mudblood mistress is descended in the direct male line from an infant squib son in the seventeenth century whom the head of family of the time was too drunk to remember to disinherit properly when he gave orders that the child be removed from his sight. The squib son was abandoned, and taken in by muggles of the name 'Granger', and mudblood mistress is his descendent. Since mudblood mistress' living muggle relations are all muggles, they may not inherit. Mudblood mistress is a witch, however, so mudblood mistress _may_ – unless mudblood mistress prefers to quite thoroughly disavow Kreacher and her inheritance so that witches of purer blood may inherit?"

"Why _am_ I ahead of Narcissa or _her_ sisters?" Hermione asked, having several questions, but figuring that this was the most important right now.

"The Black family inheritance rules do not recognise changes of name made purely in the muggle world. As far as the Black family rules are concerned, mudblood mistress' worthless squib of an ancestor was born and died a Black, and every child born to a son in the male line of his family since has been a Black. Mudblood mistress is a Black, as far as the inheritance rules are concerned, until she comes of age and confirms with the Ministry that she is a 'Granger'." There was something in Kreacher's attitude and demeanour that Hermione couldn't quite figure out – despite the insults flying around, she'd have expected him to have sounded unhappier than he currently was about the situation. Could it be that whatever archaic rules he was following mattered more to him than personal feelings about her having muggle parents? Despite this internal distraction, she tried not to lose track of Kreacher's ongoing response to her question: "In the absence of a valid will of a head of house, witches and wizards named 'Black' rightfully descended from The Most Noble and Ancient House take absolute priority in matters of inheritance over witches who have married and taken the name of another family, such as the most noble and pure-blooded Narcissa, or even the filthy blood-traitor Andromeda." Kreacher concluded.

Hermione sat down in shock.

"Is there anything else that comes to me?" she asked. "I mean other than you and the house in Grimmauld Place?"

"_Everything_ rightfully belonging to the Blacks." Kreacher said. "Mudblood mistress has a wand and has taken her OWL exams, so it is all hers. Worthless, nasty, treacherous disappointment of a son, Sirius, made a will trying to leave it elsewhere, but worthless, nasty, treacherous disappointment was a declared felon at the time of his making a will, accused of crimes including betraying to death a pure-blood son who was the head of another family, so worthless nasty treacherous disappointment's will has no legal force. Only a child of worthless nasty treacherous disappointment could have inherited from _him_, and he had no children."

"Harry was his godson." Hermione said, automatically.

"So?" Kreacher shrugged. "The Black rules are not caring about 'godchildren'. Worthless, pointless, _muggles_, for political reasons might be godchildren. Godchildren have to be left things in legally valid wills specifically, or otherwise of Black name and descent."

"I need to know what I have." Hermione said, rallying and finally starting to think logically about what she needed to do in this situation. "I also need to know what legal obligations there are implied, and I need to contact Professor Dumbledore. Could you deliver a letter to the headmaster for me, Kreacher?"

"Unless he is hiding somewhere, Kreacher can deliver a letter." Kreacher said, and then unexpectedly _smirked_ in a manner that Hermione found deeply disturbing. "And _this_ is why, once he had discovered that she is the heir, Kreacher did not think of a way to trick mudblood mistress into disavowing him and her inheritance. Kreacher has carefully researched mudblood mistress and her exploits: mudblood mistress fought a troll at the age of twelve, survived a basilisk a year later, has blackmailed a powerful journalist, and is a Hogwarts prefect. And mudblood mistress threw her enemy, the toad-woman, to the centaurs. House Black has fallen in name and reputation, but mudblood mistress possesses the abilities to restore it to greatness and its rightful place."

"Kreacher. If you're going to keep calling me 'mistress', would you _please_ call me 'muggle-born mistress' instead of 'mudblood mistress'?" Hermione said perhaps a shade more sharply than she would have done, had she been talking to, say, Dobby.

"Is that an order?" Kreacher asked.

Hermione folded her arms and glowered at him.

"Yes, that's an order!"

"To hear is to obey, muggle-born mistress." Kreacher bowed low.

Hermione was left with an uneasy sensation that Kreacher had somehow put one over on her, nonetheless.

* * *

The story of how Dobby had gotten Harry into trouble with the Ministry almost four years ago by performing magic in Privet Drive had speedily occurred to Hermione, and she'd taken care to ensure that Kreacher (as well as delivering a letter to Professor Dumbledore) would stop by the Ministry to make whatever notification was appropriate that Hermione had a house-elf working for her now. Hermione wasn't entirely happy with having a house-elf working for her – let alone a house-elf who happened to be _Kreacher_ – but she reasoned that if _anyone_ was going to have a house-elf, it might as well be her.

And she didn't like the idea of the secrets Kreacher might spill if he passed into the care of someone, say, such as Narcissa.

She'd ordered Kreacher to keep her secrets, extending it to cover a broad swathe of subjects, which had made the house-elf look disturbingly ecstatic for a moment. Apparently he considered such a tightly worded order as she'd just given him to not disclose things entirely appropriate behaviour for a Black.

Once Hermione had written her urgent letter to Dumbledore (ordering Kreacher not to read it or reveal its contents or even existence to anyone else but Dumbledore) and sent him on his way, she'd headed downstairs to explain to her parents what was going on, as far as she understood it. Kreacher arrived back in the middle of this explanation, with a huge pile of papers and documents, and an announcement that: "Muggle-born mistress' headmaster will be arriving shortly".

Kreacher pointedly ignored Hermione's parents, as being apparently beneath his notice.

The documents he had brought turned out to be various inventories, bank-records, house-deeds, and an acknowledgement from the Ministry that Miss Hermione 'Granger' (_née_ 'Black') was the owner of one house-elf, 'Kreacher', and that as a result of said house-elf coming and going the Ministry were accordingly adjusting their monitoring policy of her person and place of residence when outside Hogwarts for the remaining few months before her seventeenth birthday.

Hermione wondered if she was going to have to take the name 'Black' before she turned seventeen to hang on to everything? That went on her rapidly expanding mental 'to do list'.

Then Professor Dumbledore arrived, looking highly flustered, and given the turn that the discussion rapidly took, it became clear to Hermione's parents that an extended evening of questions and answers lay ahead, and they invited him to stay for the evening meal.

* * *

Professor Dumbledore, it turned out, was less than enthusiastic about everything Black going to Hermione. Apparently he'd been rather hoping that Sirius' will, in which it turned out Sirius had left everything to Harry, would hold, but he was forced to agree with Kreacher's assessment that it could be interpreted as legally invalid under magical law, owing to the particulars of Sirius' fugitive status. And Professor Dumbledore conceded to Hermione's point that if the Black legacy were to go _anywhere_ other than to Harry Potter, that it was probably preferable that it go to Hermione.

Kreacher smirked.

Hermione wished that Kreacher would stop doing that. It was ever so slightly disturbing to see that Kreacher approved of her winning a point against Professor Dumbledore. She could have _ordered_ him not to smirk in her presence, but that way lay madness, and increasingly desperate measures to order Kreacher not to show ever more miniscule signs of displaying approval.

Professor Dumbledore, Hermione soon discovered, was principally concerned about all the books which the Blacks possessed having passed into Hermione's ownership. That _annoyed_ her – the implication that he doubted her ability to be able to handle any information which they might contain and did not trust her to be discriminate in her reading. Well, that, and that apparently he considered that such books would present no threat if they had passed into the ownership of, say, Harry. Then again, Harry _wasn't_ likely to be quite so interested in reading a collection of rare and in some cases probably unique books, Hermione admitted to herself (and _just_ to herself).

Dumbledore correctly interpreted Hermione's expression over the matter of the Black collection of books and hastily apologised for any offence caused. He said that perhaps, in his dotage, he had not noticed how much Hermione had grown up, and that he _should_ trust her to be able to make her own judgements in the field of learning.

Hermione accepted his apology.

Kreacher smirked again.

Hermione sent Kreacher to Go and Do Useful Things, such as cataloguing her book collection.

She dearly hoped she wasn't going to regret that later.

* * *

"You're thinking about keeping this, aren't you?" the headmaster said, as they sat around drinking coffee, with dinner over. Hermione's parents were _still_ in something of a daze over their daughter suddenly being a wealthy heiress to an old family complete with her own 'servant'. "The name, the house… everything."

"Ever since I entered the wizarding world, Professor Dumbledore, I've had people sneering at me and looking down their noses at me, telling me that I'm a muggle-born and that I don't fit." Hermione said. "Some of them have been obvious and overt about it, like Draco Malfoy calling me a mudblood. Others have said it without words, by the looks they've given me, or the things they've done – or sometimes _haven't_ done. But now… but now I've been offered the name and house of one of the most prestigious and feared houses of wizarding Britain. I can _do_ things. I can say things and even the most bigoted of pure-bloods will have to pay attention and take me _seriously_."

"Oh, they take you more seriously than I think you realise already, my dear." Professor Dumbledore said. "You are, after all, one of Harry Potter's friends."

"And that's just _it_, Professor. I'm 'one of Harry's friends'. The _best_ that they can think of me is defining me in the context of being a hanger-on to someone else. They don't see and respect me in terms of being my own person. You're famous and respected for defeating Gellert Grindelwald, professor. If you could have beaten him without getting any fame or respect for it, would you have done it that way instead of out in public in the way that you did?"

For some reason, Professor Dumbledore looked inexplicably pained at this question for a moment.

"Fame and respect, Miss Granger, are not all that they are made out to be." he said quietly. "But it would be completely untrue for me to claim that I would ever purely on my own account turn down an opportunity of _rightfully_ earned influence, that would better facilitate me to pursue my own goals. True, I have turned down the position of Minister on several occasions, but that has been more out of concern for what such power to pursue my own agendas relatively unchecked might do to me. I was tried and tested on that latter count a long time ago, Miss Granger, and found sadly wanting…"

"Well _I_ haven't even been 'tried and tested' with any opportunity to have significant influence yet." Hermione said. "I'd like to at least give it a go."

"I could patronise you at this point by saying something about the innocence and naivety of youth, Miss Granger, in a suitably I-Know-Better tone, but that would do neither of us any favours. Instead, if this is indeed a course to which you wish to hold, I shall give you my best wishes, and say that I hope you prove a better witch at your age than I was a wizard in my youth."

* * *

Something about what the last significant thing her headmaster had said and the way in which he had said it, lingered with Hermione long after the following small-talk and leave-taking had been exchanged.

Eventually, just before she was going to bed, she called for Kreacher.

"Kreacher: How could I find out about Professor Dumbledore's past?" she asked her elf. "Things which aren't in normal history books I mean?…"

* * *

Author Notes: (subject to update)

I have no idea if inheritance rules amongst witches & wizards, least of all in the _Black_ family, works this way in canon, but obviously they do in this story.

I no longer recall quite why I originally wrote this story, but I strongly suspect it was something to do with wanting to get away from too much alternate universe 1976, and discovering that there were (at the time) apparently very few stories on which had Hermione Granger and Kreacher tagged as the leading characters. It seemed a good idea at the time, and unlike many other pieces composed in between staring at rewrites of Alternate Scene by the Lake chapter seven, this one is now in something resembling a sufficiently complete state to be worth posting.

Note that whilst Kreacher considers Hermione a suitable 'acquisition' for the Black family (given its current state) obviously (to his mind) he needs to train her up to behave like a proper Black, including making sure that she gives him _orders_. (His repeatedly referring to her as 'mudblood' until she orders him to say 'muggle-born' instead, is his first victory in his ongoing campaign.) He's also pleased/happy to see her holding her own against Albus Dumbledore.

This story is, I repeat, a one-shot. For those looking for longer Hermione Granger discovering unexpected roots fictions, there are plenty around. One of the better ones that I've come across is _Define 'Family'_ by _ladyofnite_, although as of August, 2013, it unfortunately appears to be abandoned (and as a warning, it starts off with a tragic event).


End file.
